
Penfold
“I am my own muse. I am the subject I know best. The subject I want to know better.” ― Frida Kahlo

Penfold
“I am my own muse. I am the subject I know best. The subject I want to know better.” ― Frida Kahlo
Sitting in her room, she was trying to work out what she had done wrong. ‘Again?’, she quietly wondered, ‘How could it be happening again?
It was like being in a glass box, the water was slowly pouring in. There was no way out and the end felt inevitable.
But if you could change one thing from the past, would it work, would it help you out of the mess you’d gotten yourself into? And what would y...
It was a small thing, really
In the cafe,
Hardly hearing me.
I held out a feather, soft
Not really useful,
But holding it up.
Whether you took it or not
Is by the by.
What mattered was the difference
Between true and lie.
To ourselves, to each other
We know the answers,
Aren’t willing to believe them.
We know the timing isn’t perfect
Yet we stop at the meaning,
We see it, congealing.
I st...
A single line, that’s all it was, written on the page like it was a hastily scrawled note to a partner, when you’d say something like ‘Just gone out to the shops’.
However, this was something that had been told to me in confidence, and it was a line so singularly odd that I had written it down, and then carelessly left it on a table in the café.
I never normally do this, I treat my client note...
It was like I’d forgotten /
All those times you were nice to me.
You’d hold my hand
You’d ask how I was
You’d smile and say,
I was an angel.
And then I remembered /
All those times my mind was elsewhere.
How he’d kissed me
How he’d whispered
How he’d pause the now,
But I’d be regret.
Love, it’s impossible /
We can’t hold onto love squandered.
Me wanting to keep
Me hoping I’d see
Me hoping I’d ...
It's like the sun can’t quite break through, the hills are too steep, the branches tangled up, and the light is caught between the cusp. Betwixt the night and day, light is matted, woven together by absence or by presence, and it’s the feeling of what might be in those negative spaces, it’s comforting, but also it’s haunting.
The castle like a ghostly ship - my mind wanders, but what of it? Is it...
I do belong to you, she said.
Her hands slipping clay,
Brow furrowed
Instead.
Each carve through her fingers.
He watched and dismayed,
Bespoke yet unreal
Virtuosity.
The smell of earth, ware, and fire.
Revolving on a wheel,
It’s art; It’s desire
Speaking.
The lie lay like a baking pot
Between hearth and iron
She wasn’t his at all,
Lion.
—-
“If this is not a self-portrait it is because when ...
What did you do?
Laid it bare on the table
One thought gone
The timing, a label.
And I paused -
What did you do?
It was noon though
Sky seemed so, so.
It creased into being
Like so many scars
What did you do?
Again, then I said -
I did it. I did do.
I had to - but did you?...
Alone on a table is a salt cellar. The glass glints in the sunlight, just a little, light dancing captures in its folds, and a faint rainbow appears.
Each grain of salt is a dried out tear, a million or more closeted inside, lost by those who have realised time is short; time is lean.
Pick up that cellar and shake it, shake it clean, release the sadness of us all, release us from the fear we liv...
Don’t be scared. We don’t know what happens next.
We think of time as linear, as that is what we have been taught to do, but it’s no more or less true than other ways of constructing reality.
Take fire, when you think of it, what do you see? A tulip shaped flame, lifting upwards, its yellow, its orange, but you look closer, and then you see blue. Do you believe that this is true?
Without the pu...
What does grief sound like? To me it’s like a ticking, a wind-up clock, or water falling, crashing against the rocks. It’s the low noise, against your ears, a constant hum, the same as the feeling of being shut in this box.
I’m cold. My toes are numb and so still, I don’t think I can move them even if there was space to. An eerie sound raises my heartbeat up like a crescendo, is the buzz in my h...